Elsevier Citescore

An extension to Scopus, a global SaaS product

Elsevier is a global information analytics company that helps institutions and professionals progress science, advance healthcare and improve performance.

Upp has provided brand, digital and print marketing and campaign support for almost a decade, principally focussed on the SaaS platforms provided to academic, government and corporate institutions.

Our brief

Elsevier’s Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, covering 5,000 international publishers, over 22,000 journal titles and over 67 million documents. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world’s research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyse and visualise research.

To help researchers, academics and publishers better access the impact of individual journals, Elsevier developed ‘CiteScore’, a new journal metric calculated using a formula applied to the average citations per journal document against its total publishing output.

To gain market acceptance, this CiteScore metric had to be launched in 2016 and Elsevier’s Research Metrics Team came to us with a challenge…

“We need to publicly launch CiteScore this year but the roadmap for Scopus development doesn’t allow this, can you help us?”

Our brief

Elsevier’s Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, covering 5,000 international publishers, over 22,000 journal titles and over 67 million documents. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world’s research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyse and visualise research.

To help researchers, academics and publishers better access the impact of individual journals, Elsevier developed ‘CiteScore’, a new journal metric calculated using a formula applied to the average citations per journal document against its total publishing output.

To gain market acceptance, this CiteScore metric had to be launched in 2016 and Elsevier’s Research Metrics Team came to us with a challenge…

“We need to publicly launch CiteScore this year but the roadmap for Scopus development doesn’t allow this, can you help us?”

The delivery

Over a whiteboard in Amsterdam, we realised the solution was to build a bespoke web app that closely integrated with the Scopus product site, from a visual and user journey perspective.

We pulled together an exacting timescale that allowed us to meet the 2016 launch target

The Scopus SaaS platform was in the final stages of a new branding and user experience rollout – an added challenge was that our web app would need to use this new branding, but we would go live first

To ensure consistency, we worked closely with the Elsevier product teams on two continents to ensure we delivered a ground breaking ‘omni-device’ interface that mirrored this new user experience

As part of our build, we also considered how the users would flow backwards and forwards from our Journal Metrics web app to Scopus and vice-versa, a particularly important consideration since the web app would eventually be absorbed into Scopus

Since Scopus is used by more than 3,000 academic, government and corporate institutions worldwide, in addition to our user Upp quality assurance and testing phase, we went through external security analysis and validation

We launched on time and within three months had driven over 50,000 visits to Scopus pages, received 45,000 visitors from the product in return, and supported the start of audience mapping by tracking usage and downloads through Adobe Marketing Cloud.

The delivery

Over a whiteboard in Amsterdam, we realised the solution was to build a bespoke web app that closely integrated with the Scopus product site, from a visual and user journey perspective.

We pulled together an exacting timescale that allowed us to meet the 2016 launch target

The Scopus SaaS platform was in the final stages of a new branding and user experience rollout – an added challenge was that our web app would need to use this new branding, but we would go live first

To ensure consistency, we worked closely with the Elsevier product teams on two continents to ensure we delivered a ground breaking ‘omni-device’ interface that mirrored this new user experience

As part of our build, we also considered how the users would flow backwards and forwards from our Journal Metrics web app to Scopus and vice-versa, a particularly important consideration since the web app would eventually be absorbed into Scopus

Since Scopus is used by more than 3,000 academic, government and corporate institutions worldwide, in addition to our user Upp quality assurance and testing phase, we went through external security analysis and validation

We launched on time and within three months had driven over 50,000 visits to Scopus pages, received 45,000 visitors from the product in return, and supported the start of audience mapping by tracking usage and downloads through Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Kind words and warm applause

“The Upp B2B team have delivered a fantastic product that we are all incredibly proud of. They have taken branding and technical specifications, along with hundreds of thousands of data points and implemented them in a way that sets a very high standard for our own product teams to follow!

I’ve worked with Upp B2B for many years on various marketing projects and websites, so this was the first time I have asked them to build a fully functional product.

I must say that they have really stepped up and combined an excellent knowledge of our business with some first rate technical expertise to produce a sophisticated, attractive and first-rate product. It’s a great piece of work for all involved!”

Chris James,Product Manager, Research Metrics, Elsevier

Kind words and warm applause

“The Upp B2B team have delivered a fantastic product that we are all incredibly proud of. They have taken branding and technical specifications, along with hundreds of thousands of data points and implemented them in a way that sets a very high standard for our own product teams to follow!

I’ve worked with Upp B2B for many years on various marketing projects and websites, so this was the first time I have asked them to build a fully functional product.

I must say that they have really stepped up and combined an excellent knowledge of our business with some first rate technical expertise to produce a sophisticated, attractive and first-rate product. It’s a great piece of work for all involved!”